


Thawed and Rebuilt

by theredrosa



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Friendship, Healing, Minor Bucky Barnes/Steve Rogers, Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-19
Updated: 2020-03-19
Packaged: 2021-03-01 02:48:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,226
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23208025
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theredrosa/pseuds/theredrosa
Summary: Bucky thinks he should remain frozen; Princess Shuri of Wakanda has other plans.
Relationships: James "Bucky" Barnes/Shuri, James "Bucky" Barnes/Steve Rogers
Comments: 2
Kudos: 26





	Thawed and Rebuilt

When Bucky comes off the ice this time, it’s both less disorienting and more. Less, because he has memories; he knows who he is, he remembers why he went into the ice. And more, because the room he went to sleep in is not the one he’s waking up in, and there is a girl standing over him that he has never seen before, prodding him and tapping at a screen suspended in the air before her.  
  
When she sees his eyes are open, she grins. “Welcome back, Sergeant Barnes.”  
  
He frowns and then winces; it’s always painful, gaining his mobility back after cryo. Even moving the delicate muscles in his face hurts. Finally, he rasps, “Where am I?”  
  
“My lab,” the girl says cheerfully. “I had you moved here so I could monitor you. And now it’s time for you to wake up.”  
  
Bucky frowns harder. “I don’t think it’s safe for me to be awake.”  
  
“But I do,” the girl says briskly. Her tone brokers no argument, and even though she is young, the power in her bearing and tone are enough to make Bucky…at least wait until he argues further. He sees himself across from Natasha Romanov - Steve had told him her name, after, and it was one of her guns he’d hefted on the jet before walking into the Hydra facility in Moscow - and in this unwelcome memory he is throwing all his weight behind a punch aimed at her with his metal arm, and then she has him in a leg lock, and he is smashing her into a table. He trembles at the memory, and thinks he will have to argue with this girl with him now and make her put him back under.  
  
“It’s time to start your rehabilitation,” the girl continues, breaking him from the cycle of memories from the last time his control was taken from him. Then her hand is on his shoulder, and her voice is less commanding, and gentle. “We’re going to look after you, Sergeant Barnes. You’re going to have yourself back.” She smiles and straightens. “I’m Princess Shuri. I’m going to help you.”

*

For the first few weeks, Bucky lives in a constant state of terror that his control will slip and he will hurt someone. The princess sees this, and sends him to a cottage on the banks of a quiet pond. She gives him goats. She insists that taking care of something will help him, that they will be therapeutic, but Bucky suspects that her serious expression is masking how hilarious she thinks giving him goats is. He sighs and names the louder one Shuri. The other one, the one that keeps head butting him, he names Sam. And though he has no idea what caring for a pair of baby goats is going to do to keep his mind intact, he bottle feeds them every morning and night. 

*

Though Bucky thinks he would be perfectly happy to stay in his cottage with his goats forever, Shuri insists that it isn’t good for him to spend all of his time alone. Every other day or so she drags him up the hill to the palace and makes him help her in her lab. “It’s probably not safe,” he mumbles as she drags him along by his wrist.  
She just scoffs. “Trust me, you’re not going to be able to hurt me in my own lab. Or anyone else.” He is skeptical, not trusting himself, but once he gets a good look around he is too amazed to think about his fears.  
  
“Oh wow,” he breathes. The technology here is mind-blowing. He thinks about seeing Howard Stark’s attempt at a flying car, back in the forties, and how amazed he was. He thinks that Shuri probably built flying cars for fun when she was in elementary school.  
  
Shuri, meanwhile, is smugly satisfied with his awe, and sets him about handing her tools and writing things down as she works. He doesn’t understand any of it, doesn’t know what the device she’s working on is even for, but he thinks that, for the first time since he can remember, he is having fun.

*

His lack of pop culture knowledge becomes swiftly apparent. She chucks an empty box at him from across the lab, yelling “YEET” and he is utterly baffled; Shuri just sighs in disappointment. She asks him if he has seen Star Wars and is shocked - how, he doesn’t know, when would he have watched movies? - when he tells her he hasn’t. Instead of letting him go back to his cottage after working in the lab (“I’ll send someone to feed the goats,” she says at his look of distress) she drags him to a room with a big screen TV.  
  
“Strap in,” she says, “we’re starting from the beginning.”  
  
And several hours later, it’s clear their opinions differ wildly, but on one thing they agree: “Wow, that one was terrible,” Bucky says as the credits for The Phantom Menace roll.  
  
“Yep,” Shuri says happily. “That one’s garbage. There’s two more of the prequels.”  
  
“There what?”  
  
“I told you to strap in,” she says, and hits play on the next.  
  
They make it through one more before Bucky is poking Shuri awake. “Princess. It’s -“ he glances at the clock above the TV, “two in the morning.” Shuri grumbles and swats at his hand. “Your back will be sore if you sleep here.”  
  
“It’s fine.”  
  
“That’s not what you’ll be saying tomorrow.”  
  
“Is too.”  
  
Bucky closes his eyes and pinches the bridge of his nose, then shakes her by the arm again. “C’mon, kid. Time for bed.”  
  
“Can’t walk,” she insists. “Too tired.”  
  
“Yes you can.”  
  
Her eyes fly open, alight with a new idea. “I am too tired. You’ll have to carry me. Piggyback ride.”  
  
Bucky rolls his eyes. “You’re joking.”  
  
“I’m not. Ask T’Challa. I make him do this all the time.”  
  
Of that, Bucky has no doubt. “Shuri, I only have one arm.”  
  
“You’ll manage,” she says. Bucky sighs and kneels by the couch.  
  
“C’mon then.”  
  
Shuri laughs in delight and hops on his back. Slim as she is, she weighs practically nothing, and Bucky does his best to balance her with just his right arm and her stranglehold on his neck. He walks her down the hall to the room she directs him to, and dumps her unceremoniously on her bed. She flops onto her back and smiles.  
  
“Good night, Bucky.”  
  
He turns to hide his smile. “Good night, Princess.”

*

The first time he truly questions Shuri’s methods, he is in the throes of a rage of a kind that he doesn’t ever remember experiencing - not even as the Winter Soldier, when his emotions had been stolen from him and he killed not from anger but from a cold lack of control, or before, when he was just himself, and Steve had done something stupid or some bully had cornered him in a back alley - and he finds himself swearing profusely, every awful thing he’d learned from his years in the army burning to be said.  
  
“WHY ARE THEY HITTING ME I AM IN NEXT TO LAST PLACE,” he screams, and his character on the screen gets hit with a red shell before spinning off the track and his half of the screen goes black. Shuri cackles as she begins the last lap. She’d decided they should play MarioKart - to test the fine motor skills with the new arm she’d given him, she’d said. Bucky has gotten last place in every race. He wants to tear his hair from his head. Shuri has won every. Single. One.  
  
“I told you not to get a car, you should’ve picked a heavy character with a bike,” she says sanctimoniously as she laps him. Bucky swears under his breath and tries to steer the tiny white wheel she’d put his controller in. He thinks she did it to make him look ridiculous. “This is nothing like actual driving,” he says bitterly.  
  
“This is teaching you how to control your emotions,” she says serenely, hitting Birdo with her own red shell and cruising into first place. Bucky gets a pity bullet from his box. It makes him want to swear harder.  
  
“I really don’t think it is,” he says through his teeth.  
  
“Just imagine,” Shuri says, “you’ll get good at it, and then you can play Steve and Sam when they visit next. And you’ll win.”  
  
Beating Sam at MarioKart does sound appealing. He resolves to practice. It doesn’t keep him from swearing every time his car runs off the track. “It’ll take a while,” Shuri says. Bucky throws a pillow at her.

*

It is a few months in before he has visitors. But one morning, he is in Shuri’s lab, fiddling with some wiring on a device Shuri had plunked in front of him when he’d come in that morning (“an energy converter for one of the cannons,” she’d explained briskly, “it’s wired wrong. Fix it for me?). He’s been picking up on some things while he’s helped her in the lab, eager to understand the mechanics of Shuri’s inventions. He is reattaching a wire to its correct connection when the door swings open and some unfamiliar footsteps make their way in. He’s already turning around when Shuri calls, “Captain!”  
  
And there they are. Natasha, a hand on her hip and a small smile on her mouth, her hair cropped above her shoulders and dyed blonde. Sam, on her other side, arms crossed over his chest but a smile on his face too. No wariness in his eyes. But then, even when Bucky had been attacking him, he’d never looked frightened. Startled, maybe - the time Bucky ripped a steering wheel out of his hands and out of his car comes to mind - but never afraid.  
  
And, of course, Steve. The first thing Bucky notices is his hair has grown out. He’s grown a beard. But his eyes are as blue as ever, and Bucky doesn’t think twice before rushing over to the three and throwing his arm around Steve. There isn’t even a beat before Steve is crushing him in his arms too, and Bucky feels himself let out a breath he feels like he’s been holding since Shuri had awakened him in this very lab. When he finally releases Steve, Sam nods to him and Natasha squeezes his shoulder.  
  
“Welcome to my lab,” Shuri says, sweeping over. Occasionally the bearing of her youth falls away, and she becomes the image of her mother; effortlessly regal, wisdom beyond her youth and power in her stride. She gives the three visitors the tour - when had Bucky stopped feeling like a visitor in this lab? - pointing out in particular the projects Bucky has been assisting with.  
  
He keeps Steve always in his peripheral vision, but occasionally darts nervous looks at Natasha and Sam. He’d tried to kill them the last time he was awake. He was touched that they were here, but nervous as well. He loved Steve enough to break through the conditioning and keep himself from killing him, but - he hadn’t hesitated after Zemo had used the words, he’d almost killed Sam and Natasha. He knew Steve loved and forgave him. Did Sam and Natasha?  
  
It was when Shuri took them down to his cottage, Steve and Natasha laughing over his goats, that Sam tugs him aside by the shoulder and speaks to him in a low voice. “You’re safe here, you know?” he says. Bucky frowns at him. Sam sighs. “You’re not gonna hurt anyone else. Shuri - she knows what she’s doing. Steve left you here because he knew T’Challa would know what to do, to keep you safe. You’re going to be all right.”  
  
“The rest of you almost weren’t,” Bucky says bluntly. “Because of me.”  
  
“But here we are,” Sam says. “You even named a goat after me. I’m honored.” His flat delivery is enough to make Bucky laugh. Sam smiles at that.  
  
“Just because Hydra used you doesn’t make you what they wanted you to be. You were strong enough to break through. You’re strong enough to just be you again.”  
  
Bucky squeezes Sam’s shoulder in silent gratitude. Sam smiles, then jerks his head toward the paddock outside the cottage. “All right, now show me this damn goat.”  
  
Later that day, Shuri takes them all to her media room. They play MarioKart, as she’d promised that first day when she’d throttled Bucky every race. Natasha and Shuri trade on and off winning first, and Bucky stays firmly in the middle of the pack each time. He’s improved each time he and Shuri have played - although he knows she likes playing with him because she always wins, T’Challa is never an assured victory for her - but not enough to actually beat her. Now Sam, on the other hand…they are more evenly matched, but Bucky consistently wins. He does his best not to preen every time he crosses the finish line and Steve whoops while Sam swears viciously.  
  
And he thinks, as warmth grows in his chest and Shuri shoots him a wink from across the couch, that she has been right the entire time. He is going to heal. He isn’t going to have to hurt anyone against his will again.  
  
He’s going to be okay.

**Author's Note:**

> A little friendship fic for my wonderful friend in fandom, Michael <3


End file.
